C
Chris_McAvoy
Guest
Author: St Jerome
Location: various (including Bethlehem), but born near Aquelia, modern-day Italy.
Period: late 4th/early 5th century.
You see, then, that we are privileged to partake of His essence, not in the realm of nature, but of grace, and the reason why we are beloved of the Father is that He has loved the Son; and the members are loved, those namely of the body. For as many as received Christ, to them gave He power to become sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” The Word was made flesh that we might pass from the flesh into the Word. The Word did not cease to be what He had been; nor did the human nature lose that which it was by birth. The glory was increased, the nature was not changed.
Author: St Augustine
Location: Hippo (modern day Bone, Algeria)
Period: late 4th/early 5th century.
But then who are those gods, or where are they, of whom God is the true God? Another Psalm saith, “God hath stood in the synagogue of gods, but in the midst He judgeth gods.” As yet we know not whether perchance any gods be congregated in heaven, and in their congregation, for this is “in the synagogue,” God hath stood to judge. See in the same Psalm those to whom he saith, “I have said, Ye are gods, and children of the Highest all; but ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” It is evident then, that He hath called men gods, that are deified of His Grace, not born of His Substance. For He doth justify, who is just through His own self, and not of another; and He doth deify who is God through Himself, not by the partaking of another. But He that justifieth doth Himself deify, in that by justifying He doth make sons of God. “For He hath given them power to become the sons of God.” If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods: but this is the effect of Grace adopting, not of nature generating. For the only Son of God, God, and one God with the Father, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, was in the beginning the Word, and the Word with God, the Word God. The rest that are made gods, are made by His own Grace, are not born of His Substance, that they should be the same as He, but that by favour they should come to Him, and be fellow-heirs with Christ.
There shall we be still, and know that He is God; that He is that which we ourselves aspired to be when we fell away from Him, and listened to the voice of the seducer, “Ye shall be as gods,” and so abandoned God, who would have made us as gods, not by deserting Him, but by participating in Him.